IWS Index.htm

Welcome to IWI

IWI ... is a group of interactive tutorials that teach concepts and techniques for effective searching and retrieval of online information on International Women's Issues.

IWI ... highlights databases licensed to University of Wisconsin System libraries as well as free Internet resources. Anyone may use our tutorials, but access to licensed databases is restricted to students, faculty, and staff of the University of Wisconsin.

IWI ... is a project of the University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Librarian's Office. Initial development was funded by the University of Wisconsin System Institute for Global Studies. The University of Wisconsin-Madison General Library System provides ongoing support.

CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S ISSUES IN LEXIS-NEXIS

LEXIS-NEXIS™ Academic & Library Solutions is a huge fulltext database of newspapers, magazines, newsletters, wire services, news broadcast transcripts, and more. Included within it is material from Contemporary Women's Issues, an international fulltext database of articles from women-focused magazines, newsletters, and journals, as well as reports and pamphlets from governments and organizations.

This tutorial will guide you through the steps of locating and searching Contemporary Women's Issues within LEXIS-NEXIS™ Academic & Library Solutions and offer tips on effective fulltext database searching. You will also have the opportunity to test your knowledge and recall.

EVALUATING WEB SEARCH RESULTS

Internet search engines are programs that search pages on the Web for specific keywords and return a list of documents where those keywords were found, often in order of relevance as determined by a combination of factors built into the search engine's program. While this is helpful, it still does not mean that the sites ranked highest will best answer your particular information need. Only you can determine, through a critical inspection of the sites, what information is truly relevant.

This tutorial, using results of a search conducted using the Google search engine, will teach you how to perform such an inspection using an easy to remember Who? What? When? Why? and How? approach.

GENDER WATCH PLEASE NOTE THAT IN MID-2004 PROQUEST CHANGED THE DESIGN AND PROTOCOLS OF GENDERWATCH TO CONFORM TO OTHER PROQUEST DATABASES. THIS TUTORIAL HAS NOT YET BEEN CHANGED.

GenderWatch is a fulltext database primarily of articles from women or gender-focused newsletters, magazines, and journals. There are also some conference proceedings, books, booklets, and reports from governments and organizations in GenderWatch.

This tutorial will teach you how to be a smart GenderWatch searcher.

USING A METASITE

Metasites arrange information and links to other web resources on a specific topic. They are time-savers because the metasite creator has already scoured the web, evaluated sites, and provided descriptions and links only to sites that meet the criteria for the metasite. When created by professors and librarians, this generally means linking to sites that are content-rich from an academic perspective.

This tutorial will use the metasite produced by the Office of the Women's Studies Librarian for the UW System <http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/intl.htm> as a springboard to finding web-based information on international women's issues.

For more information on related sites, please visit:

Women's Studies Consortium
UW System

Office of the Women's
Studies Librarian

UW System

Institute for Global Studies
UW System

This page is maintained by the University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Librarian
430 Memorial Library, 728 State Street, Madison, WI 53706 · (608) 263-5754

Please try the tutorials and give us feedback,

or contact the librarian.

IWI: International Women's Issues Tutorials are published by the University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Librarian's Office, Madison, Wisconsin. Copyright © 2002 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.